Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
“So how was your day, babe?” Bennett asks, pressing a kiss to the crown of my head as he comes up behind me.
I’m stretched out by the pool with a romance novel open in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other, the pages unread for the last several minutes as my thoughts drift somewhere darker.
Bennett lowers himself into the lounger beside me with the easy grace of a man who belongs anywhere he sits, crossing one ankle over the other and folding his hands behind his head as he leans back into the cushion.
I pause, letting myself look at him properly.
My husband is beautiful in that polished, old-money way, all clean lines and composed charm, with the kind of sharply cut jaw that would make a Kennedy jealous and bright blue eyes that rarely give more away than he intends.
There are times, even now, when the sight of him still catches me off guard.
“My day was eventful,” I say at last, my tone light even though I can feel the strain beneath it.
“Why so?” His eyes stay closed, his face turned toward the sun as though this is nothing more than a lazy evening and not the aftermath of the most destabilizing weeks of my life.
“I stopped by the market, visited the venue for the charity brunch, talked to my brother.” I swirl the wine in my glass and watch the pale liquid catch the light. “It only took a few minutes for me to remember that blood is definitely not thicker than water.”
“That sounds promising,” Bennett says dryly.
“Exactly.” I let out a short breath, unsure how much of this I want to share.
He already thinks I’m fixating. I can feel it in the way he watches me now, in the careful suggestions about grief counseling, in the soft caution beneath his voice whenever Whitney comes up.
He mentioned it again last night before bed, the idea that talking to someone might help, but I can already imagine how that would go.
Some bland office, some gentle-eyed woman telling me there’s no right way to grieve while I nod along and waste an hour I do not have.
I do not need a stranger guiding me through the stages of loss when I am trying to solve a murder.
“Maverick wants me to visit the reservation,” I continue, my gaze fixed out on the shimmering water.
“Apparently our father is struggling with medical bills, the elders are making his life hell, and God knows what else. The second Mav brought it up, my chest started tightening. They were never there for me, not once, and somehow I’m still supposed to show up now because it would make everyone feel better. ”
Bennett opens one eye then, glancing at me. “Do they want money?”
I hum in confirmation and leave it at that, because the truth is I do not want to talk about them any more than absolutely necessary.
The guilt is there, of course it is. It cuts deep enough that I can feel it even now, but seeing them, hearing the same old pleas, looking into eyes that only soften when they need something from me feels like a more intimate kind of misery than distance ever has.
“I can write them a check,” Bennett says after a moment. “If that would make this easier for you.”
“Honestly, having as little to do with them as possible feels easiest.” I take another sip of wine and stare down at the condensation on the stem of the glass. “But I also know that probably makes me the asshole.”
“Well,” he says with a quiet chuckle, “to them, maybe. But the only thing that matters to me is how you feel. It sounds like they only reach out when they want something anyway.”
“That’s what I thought.” My voice softens despite myself. “They chose to stay there. They chose to give me up. Why does any of this become my responsibility now?”
“It doesn’t,” Bennett replies simply. “But you may have to make peace with being the villain in their version of the story.”
“And in Maverick’s too.” I look down at the label on my wineglass, tracing the edge of it with my thumb.
“His account is always overdrawn, he’s always scraping by, and still he never asks me for anything.
That’s why I try to spoil him when I can.
Gift cards on his birthday, Christmas, things like that.
He makes a point of being part of my life.
He calls because he cares. He drives down here to meet me for tacos. He came to our wedding.”
The memory catches unexpectedly, bright and painful.
Whitney at my side as maid of honor, laughing into the wind on the beach, her dress whipping around her legs while she held my bouquet and told me not to cry before I’d even started.
So many good memories now carry the same bitter aftertaste, as if grief has reached back and stained them all.
I press my lips together and keep going. “He told me he’s already lent them some money. He knows he’ll never see it again, and he doesn’t even have the money to be lending.”
“I’m still happy to write him a check,” Bennett says. “Maybe give it to him and let him decide what to do.”
My face falls before I can stop it. The problem is, I do know exactly what he would do. Maverick’s heart has always been bigger than his judgment where they’re concerned, and I can already picture the money disappearing into that same black hole of need and guilt and obligation.
“He just…” I stop, searching for the right words. “He surrounds himself with so many toxic people that I’m afraid it’s going to sink him, and if I get too close, I’m afraid it’ll pull us under too.”
Bennett turns his head fully then, studying me. “I wouldn’t let that happen. And I think your brother is smarter than you’re giving him credit for.”
“Is he?” I ask quietly.
He shrugs, like there’s no point chasing the question to its end. “How does surf and turf sound for dinner? I picked up ribeyes and prawns on the way home.”
“That sounds perfect.” I smile as he pushes himself up from the lounger and heads toward the outdoor kitchen.
Bennett loves to cook, and he moves around a kitchen with a natural confidence I’ve always envied.
It is one of the many things I love about him, the way nurturing comes so easily to him when it never did to the people who raised me.
He makes me feel cherished in a way I never understood as a child, when I watched other mothers fuss over scraped knees and celebrate honor roll certificates while my own barely seemed to notice when I won equestrian awards or graduated valedictorian.
Kathy Williams might have taken me to some polished waterfront restaurant to mark an achievement if it fit neatly into her schedule, but more often than not I ate with the maid and put myself to bed.
Hugs and kisses and I love you were never part of the Williams vocabulary.
When I was younger, I used to wonder why they had adopted me at all if love was never going to enter the arrangement.
By the time I hit my teens, though, I had stopped asking that question.
I was simply grateful I hadn’t been raised on the reservation, grateful for the education, the safety, the future they placed within reach.
In hindsight, maybe that was why they took me to meet my biological family when I was twelve.
Maybe it was their way of teaching me gratitude by comparison.
It worked, in its own way. It just didn’t make me love them more.
“McCullough!”
I hear Chrissy before I see her.
“Hey,” I call back, pasting on a warm smile as she appears through the hedge between our houses.
I feel a brief, guilty recoil at the sight of her stepping out of Whitney’s yard, because some stubborn part of me still resists the reality that anyone else occupies that space now.
But if I’m going to make Chrissy trust me, I need to believe in the performance of our friendship just as much as she does.
“Phillip is in a rage,” she says as she drops onto the lounger Bennett just vacated.
“Why?” I ask, and the question comes out more casually than I feel. Whitney never once described him that way. Irritated, dismissive, controlling, yes. But rage suggests something more volatile, something less polished.
“He’s been dealing with investigators from the insurance company all day, and they’re being ruthless.” She shakes her head, eyes wide with indignation on his behalf. “They won’t approve his claim because they think there may have been foul play.”
“Really?” I keep my face carefully measured, though I can feel something electric spark beneath my skin. “I thought the fire chief said it was spontaneous combustion from a pile of rags.”
“They did say that, but I guess that’s not enough for the insurance people.
They think Phillip may have had something to do with it.
” She lowers her voice, as if sharing something intimate.
“And then the life insurance company is giving him hell too. They want to go through the whole thing step by step. A house visit, then the marina, then a full walkthrough of what happened.”
“How is he supposed to do that without the yacht?”
“The sheriff seized what’s left of it.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s sitting at the county marina all chained up, half destroyed. It’s awful.”
I study her while she talks. She is so willing to believe what she’s told that part of me almost envies it. She accepts each new explanation without resistance, folds it into place, and moves on. It is probably one of the reasons Phillip likes her so much. She’s easy.
“What’s he going to do?” I ask.
“Whatever they ask, I guess. He got off the phone earlier and threw it across the room. Put a hole in the wall above the fireplace.” She lowers her voice. “He’s been kind of unhinged lately. I’ve never seen him like this. But I guess he’s never lost a wife before.”
Or murdered one, I think.
“The boat claim is frozen because the cause of the explosion looks suspicious,” she continues.
“The life insurance won’t approve anything because there’s no body, and the coroner won’t sign a death certificate without proof that she died.
The captain is dead, Phillip’s lucky to be alive, and they still don’t know where Whitney even was on the boat.
” She pauses. “The last time she was seen was on the marina CCTV footage. She boarded with Phillip and the captain.”
There’s a sharp shift inside me at that. “There’s CCTV footage?”
Chrissy nods. “Yeah. She was wearing that huge sunhat she always wore. Giant black sunglasses, a caftan, the whole thing. I mean, from the pictures I’ve seen, that seems very her.”
The mention of the hat hits me harder than it should.
Whitney loved that ridiculous oversized Gucci hat, and I used to tease her that she looked like she belonged on some yacht in Ibiza with Jennifer Lopez.
It was exactly the kind of over-the-top detail that made her Whitney, extravagant and self-aware and impossible not to love.
Emotion rises quickly, hot and unwelcome. I blink hard and force it down.
“God, I’m sorry,” Chrissy says, misreading my silence. “This must be really hard for you. I keep forgetting you two were close.”
“Not that close,” I say too quickly.
I need her comfortable. I need her to believe I have no real loyalty here, that whatever existed between Whitney and me was shallow enough not to threaten her.
Chrissy offers me a sympathetic smile. “Phillip isn’t sleeping. He’s been so angry during the day, and we’ve been fighting more. I just moved in, and already it feels like he hates me. Sometimes it feels like we’ve been married for twenty years.”
A frown flickers across my face before I can stop it, and she catches it instantly. Her eyes slip away from mine and she goes quiet.
“I guess there’s no right way to grieve,” I say finally, repeating some hollow thing I must have read online in the middle of the night.
“Yeah.” She sighs, twisting her hands together. “I’m just so used to taking care of him, and he’s always been so loving. Not just with me. With everyone.”
I have to work not to react to that. That is not the man I know. And while I would never say it out loud, I probably know the real Phillip better than she does.
“Hey, ladies.”
Bennett’s voice cuts cleanly through the moment as he comes out of the house carrying a tray of raw steaks, heading toward the outdoor kitchen with that same easy warmth he seems to offer everyone without effort.
“Why don’t you and Phillip join us for dinner?” he asks.
Chrissy straightens immediately, smoothing her dress. “Oh, I shouldn’t. He’s not really appropriate company right now. He’s been dealing with the insurance companies and the sheriff all day.”
“I bet,” Bennett says mildly as he lights the grill. “Can I at least get you a drink?”
“No, thank you. I should get back. I don’t like leaving him alone too long when he’s like this.”
Of course you don’t, I think.
“Let me know if you need anything,” I call after her. “I’m here.”
She turns, gives me a quick smile, and disappears back through the hedge.
“She seems sweet,” Bennett says once she’s gone.
“Mhmm.” I keep my eyes fixed on the space where she vanished. “Sweet as honey, and I don’t trust her one ounce.”
He lets out a soft laugh as he lays the steaks on the grill. “Why?”
“Because it’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar.” I take a slow sip of wine, still watching the hedge. “I think she’s hiding his secrets. I just haven’t figured out whether she knows she’s doing it.”
“That’s a serious accusation.”
“Well, my best friend is dead. That’s a serious situation.”
Bennett falls quiet for a beat, the hiss of the grill filling the space between us. “I just hope you’re not in over your head.”
“What does that mean?”
He looks at me then, really looks at me. “I mean if Phillip has that much to lose, and that many people he owes, then what do you think he’d do to protect himself?”
A chill moves through me so fast I almost shiver. “You think Chrissy is in danger?”
“No,” Bennett says, his tone calm enough to make it worse. “I think you are.”